The moving and storage industry often serves consumers who need to store large amounts of material for varying lengths of time. This situation arises when families are changing jobs and moving to different cities, remodeling their current home, and more. Customers who need off-site storage are often in the throes of a stressful situation made even more so by the inconvenience, expense and inefficiency of traditional moving and storage options.
Traditionally, moving and storage options consist of a warehouse divided into multiple units which can be rented for expensive fees. To use traditional storage units, the customer must either pay someone to load the material requiring storage or do so themselves and bring it to the storage facility. The material is then unloaded and packed away in the storage unit. When storage is no longer needed, the material must be removed from the storage facility, reloaded into a truck, transported back to the desired location and finally unloaded yet again. The material to be stored is handled a total of four times, resulting in great inefficiency and rising costs.
Another inconvenience with traditional mini-storage and moving options is the location of the storage units. Traditional moving and storage units are often located in out of the way neighborhoods, as space for storage units is rarely found in downtown areas. Space for long-term storage is hard to find in any situation, but especially in large metropolitan areas where even space for parking is at a premium. In the rare instance storage space is conveniently located, it is often exorbitantly expensive.
It is often helpful to provide a portable storage container unit at the user's location and then be able to easily transport the container unit to another location such as a storage facility or another location designated by the user. While systems like this are available in the industry, none provide the combination of allowing the container unit to be easily move within a storage yard, onto a transportation vehicle (such as a flatbed trailer), and to the user's location.